As if following their own script for justifying war, the Bush administration pronounced Iraq to be in material breach of United Nations resolutions just days after Baghdad released an obligatory 12,000-page arms declaration. While some of the White House criticism of Iraqi weapons documentation was echoed by Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, chief UN weapons inspectors -- most members of the Security Council affirmed that Washington's judgment had no standing without a vote of the full Council.

In a further sign of friction at the UN, many of the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council were angered by the Bush administration's behind-the-scenes maneuvering to delay distribution and censor large portions of the 12,000-page Iraqi arms declaration to non-nuclear states serving in that body. And with statements from the White House sounding ever more bellicose, calls for the U.S. to back up its allegations against Iraq with hard evidence are being heard more forcefully around world.

Public opinion polls here in the U.S. also reveal growing sentiment that President Bush has not made a convincing case that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction justifying a U.S. war. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Joanne Landy, co-director of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, who assesses the ability of the U.S. peace movement to slow down or stop the White House plan for war with Baghdad.

Contact the Campaign for Peace and Democracy by via email at cpd@igc.org or sign onto their national statement opposing the war online at www.zmag.org/antiwarsigners.html

Related links:

• "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup: Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds" By Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2002, Page A01 Editor's Note: Article describes how Donald Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, was a special presidential envoy whose December 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussein during 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war helped open the door to trade in weapons that is now deplored
• Editor's Note: Also available on the above Web page until Jan. 13, 2003 -- Photo Gallery: "Was This the Garden of Eden?" Washington Post photographer Michael Robinson-Chavez, Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2002 visits southeastern Iraq where a once paradisiacal landscape has given away to bleak poverty. Note that the photos contain the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which are referred to in the Bible (Genesis 2:10) in the Garden of Eden, and also widely known as Mesopotamia, Western civilization's "Cradle of Civilization."